Voyeur and Adjacent Literacies: Textual Bodies and Reading Relationships

This article emerged from curiosity about how we, as white women, might responsibly engage the knowledges of Black women theorists in our reading practices. We briefly consider how whiteness in a white supremacist society has produced (our) reading practices. This positioning can lead to what we call voyeur literacies, reading in which we derive pleasure from others’ words, but do so without a responsible relationship. Drawing on Tina Campt’s concept of adjacency, we theorize the affective, embodied encounter of a different stance: adjacent literacies. Adjacent literacies remind us of our unknowing and implication in systems of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. While filled with tensions, risks, and questions, the affective practice of adjacent literacy—reading alongside, outside, or beside—orients us to a racialized perspective not our own and asks us to engage the world differently and accountably in relationships both on and off the page.